In an existing social network, a user can search for users to be required, such as the users in an adjacent region of the user, according to geographical position information the user.
In particular, when a user X is to search for users in an adjacent region of the user X, the user X may transmit a searching command to a client of the user X, such as a mobile terminal. After receiving the searching command transmitted from the user X, the client obtains geographical position information of the user X, and transmits a searching request to a server, wherein the searching request carries information, such as the geographical position information, a user identifier of the user X, etc. The server can store the information that is referred as searching request information and is contained in the received searching request and can determine whether searching request information previously stored includes searching request information satisfying requirements, wherein the searching request information satisfying the requirements meets the following conditions: a distance between the user corresponding to the searching request information determined according to the geographical position information in the received searching request and the user X is less than a predetermined threshold. If the searching request information previously stored satisfies the above requirements, relative information of the user corresponding to the searching request information satisfying the requirements is returned to the client of the user X.
The relative information may include a user identifier, personal basic information and a distance between the user corresponding the relative information and the user X, wherein the personal basic information generally includes the information recorded when the user registers to a network, such as an age, a sex, a career, a city, etc. The personal basic information is stored in the server. The server may search for the corresponding personal basic information through the user identifier.
After receiving the relative information of the users from the server, the client may present the relative information to the user X. And the user X may select an interesting user, and transmit a message to communicate with the interesting user via the client.
In a practical application, the user X may transmit searching requests to the server through the client more than once, and all the searching requests may carry information including the geographical position information and the user identifier, etc. For the user X, the server only stores the geographical position information and the like carried in the searching request latest received. That is, the server may respectively update the previously received geographical position information and the like by the currently received geographical position information and the like.
However, in the practical application,
provided that user Y is previously at location A, and transmits a searching request, and the geographical position information of the user Y in the searching request information stored in the server is the geographical position information when the user Y is at a location A. Thereafter, the user Y moves to a location B for some reasons, and does not yet transmit a searching request. Thus, when the user X transmits a searching request, the server will determine whether the user Y is in the adjacent region of the user X according to the geographical position information previously stored when the user Y is at the location A. If yes, the server will returns the relative information of the user Y to the user X. However, in actual, at this time, the user Y has already moved to the location B which may be quite far away from the user X. Since the user X only is interesting in users in the adjacent region of the user X, the relative information of the user Y returned from the server is invalid for the user X.